The old joke goes that while mothers know their children’s birthdays, shoe sizes, favourite sweets, least favourite foods and names of their best friends; and their best friends’ birthdays, shoe sizes, favourite sweets, least favourite foods and their best friends, fathers are vaguely aware there are small creatures in the house.
Similarly, women are supposedly able to walk, read a newspaper, send text messages and help old ladies across the street while simultaneously reciting their children’s birthdays, shoe sizes, favourite sweets, least favourite foods and names of their best friends. On the other hand, men can just about manage to chew gum without falling over.
‘I’m concentrating on breathing’
Definitely a sexism thing going on there: women can multitask; men can’t. I guess it’s fair enough, given that misogyny is endemic in our culture. But, you see, it’s actually a well-kept secret. As a man, I can say that we can do things like put up shelves, look after the baby and cook dinner all the while listening to the cricket. Truth is, we’d much rather sit and watch the cricket and pretend that we’re stretching our limited resources by knowing exactly how much beer remains in the fridge (just don’t ask us to explain LBW, OK?). We find life a lot easier if we keep people’s expectations low.
Anyway, Jenny twittered today about multitasking. And while I am keen to find out what exactly was going on in her UCL empire, I am also reminded of something that happened to me when I went to work for a little company you’ve probably never even heard of (unless you read this blog).
I realized pretty early on in my graduate career that I couldn’t afford to do just one thing at a time. If I wanted G-actin (prepared from rabbit muscle) purified and labelled and polymerization-competent during the same timeframe that the protein I had to purify from buckets of chicken gizzards (five day prep, ammonium sulphate extraction followed by four columns, all in the coldroom) was going to be stable, I had to do things simultaneously. Especially if I also wanted to make competent cells so that I could clone and express the domain that I was also trying to crystallize before my stipend ran out.
Multitasking seemed pretty normal to me, as well as sensible. My first post-doc was the same: cloning, expressing, growing cells and chopping off the fingers of students who didn’t know how to use computers all had to happen at the same time if the papers were to be published.
It was quite the shock when I got to the company, and was told very early on that I could only work on one project at a time, and shouldn’t interleave experiments. Because, the story went, all the projects would then suffer.
I never did understand that. I did, actually, rather well at that company, getting two projects (the first minor, the second pretty major) to launch and realizing the third was utterly doomed, in three years. So well, that when I stormed out they hired two people to replace me and still spiralled into the ground a year or two later.
When I went back to academia I was straight back into multitasking mode: at any one time I’d be trying to crystallize (or solve by NMR) five different proteins (the chances of any one protein crystallizing are around 10%. But you never know which 10% it’s going to be in advance, and you can never tell when a sodding high throughput structosomic project is going to gazump you. Cock) as well as growing cells and doing nuclear import assays, teaching students how not to poison themselves or anyone else, helping out other members of the lab and running secret projects on the side.
It’s the same in my new job, too. I don’t feel happy unless I’m juggling too many eggs. Not only do I find that I finish multiple tasks ahead of the combined schedule, I also get bored if I have to stick to one thing and one thing only.
So maybe being limited to one project does work for normal people. But for the type of person who likes science? Well, I don’t claim to be normative, and I’d love to hear about your experience. As for me, I go stir crazy if I only have one thing to do.
But don’t ask me to mow the lawn when I’m watching the cricket.
It is a particular thing you pick up in the lab, I think.
My office mate when I was at Human Biology also came from research, and one week she had to view, convert, and save about 10 videos that her students made. She set up a bunch of laptops all over the place. One was burning one file, the second converting another, and she was watching the third. Then she put in some “overnight” file conversions and CD-burning things before she left, and said “It’s like I’m back in the lab!”
No, Eva, it’s the other way around – those of us drawn to bench work were probably already nascent multitaskers. Don’t you think? I think I have personally found the upper bound to efficient use of time and it’s rather like Windows when it writes to a very full, fragmented disk – I get really spread thin and nothing advances very quickly.
My industry job didn’t require multitasking so much as ADHD. I’m still recovering.
“…and running secret projects on the side.”
Like the lair in the volcano world domination one? Oh, no I’ve said too much.
And now back to work on the 10 different projects at once effort…
Volcanoes are so 70s, Nathaniel.
I think Heather is right: ‘those of us drawn to bench work were probably already nascent multitaskers’. Among other things, like not being able to rest until we get to the bottom of something.
I hear ya. Now that I’m a post-doc, and have only research to do, I kind of feel lost. I miss the days where I had multiple things on the go, which were very different. If I got bored with one, I’d just move on to something else. Now I’m forced to work on the same kind of work (even though I have 3 projects on the go) all day – I need my non-research options back!
I don’t believe if you are drawn to bench work you are born to multitask. I am terrible at multitasking (and female), only able to barely juggle three projects at once. That said, I have found my time in the lab has improved my multitasking skills out of necessity, so I guess I’m with Eva.
I am terrible at multitasking (and female), only able to barely juggle three projects at once.
Dear Beta Gal,
multi = more than one. Now, how’s that RACE coming along?
love, BK
those of us drawn to bench work were probably already nascent multitaskers
Or at least the others are weeded out in the process – I’ve met undergraduate students who told me I couldn’t expect them to work on the essay part of their project during incubation times, since it was too confusing. Those students didn’t last long.
And I definitely agree with Richard – only one project at the time? Very dull!
I think multitasking skills extend beyond the bench. They’re pretty much necessary for survival in most industry jobs, which is not to say that everyone has them.
@Richard: I miss cricket!
Yes Ken: I found it odd that my industry seniors told me not to do it.
You can get Test Match Special from the BBC website you know?
I’ve tried the BBC feeds but most of them are blocked to viewers outside the UK. There are other ways of finding (free) live streaming video of popular matches, of course, but they aren’t too reliable and often break down in the middle of a particularly exciting point in the match.
Maybe I should go back to a shortwave radio?
I fondly recall the lab days of setting things up in such a way that in the time window when one thing is running, something else can be started. I’m not sure that I’m anything like as good at it now, but since most things I now do require sitting in front of a computer, it’s a bit harder. If Google searches took hours to complete, I could set one running and then go do something else, but…
Hm. Heather’s point about Windows and large, fragmented and full disks is a good one though. Perhaps I could go and read an article while a file saves, or something.
I need to reformat my hard drive.
I think I need to upgrade to gigabit ethernet.
I think I need to upgrade to gigabit ethernet.
With some InfiniBand backplane. Having just twiddled my thumbs during an 80-Mb download of Norton’s latest Interchoob Securimawhoozits thingy (yes, yes, I know), I’m thinking an upgrade at Chateau Wintle is also in order.
My youngest keeps talking about cyborg implants. I do hope she’s not turning into Kevin Warwick.
Or Steve Mann. Wearable rather than implantable, but still…
Strange definition of ‘wearable’.